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Project Eternity Update #36: Off to our elfhomes, but first...

The Guildmaster

Posted 18 December 2012 - 06:50 PM

The Guildmaster

Administrator

Admin

657 posts

Location:Orange County, CA

Hello, friends. The elves have been hard at work on Project Eternity, and we would like to show you our fine goods. This is a long update, but we wanted to give you more information than usual since it's the end of the year and we will be in our elfhomes for the next few weeks. First, I'd like to talk about what we've been doing with the engine and second, I'd like to talk about some of the design work we've been doing.

Resolution and Scaling - We want to run the game at various resolutions and scale properly. We've been talking about our target resolutions and looking at the best way to implement scaling. If you've played any of the Infinity Engine games lately, you may have noticed that running at high resolutions can make the game look like an RTS. Though it's nice to be able to scale up and see more of the environment, at a certain point dungeons start looking like ant farms. That's what happens when you take a game designed for 640x480 and run it at more than double the resolution. It is now the year 2012, so we're looking at supporting a range of resolutions that runs from modest laptops to Macs with crazy Retina displays.

To do this, we're going to render the game out at a target high resolution and a target low resolution. Currently, we're looking at a base resolution of 1280x720. A large number of laptops run at this resolution or its slightly bigger brother, 1366x768. It's not quite twice the resolution of the original games (640x480) due to the 16:9 aspect ratio, but pretty close. We believe that this base resolution will scale well up to 1920x1080, which would be roughly equivalent to going from 640x480 to 1024x768. In the old IE games, this gave you a slightly larger view of the world, but didn't get too crazy.

We will likely downsample these to run at 1920x1080. With resolutions above "mere" Retina displays, we will zoom out, which should allow the backgrounds to scale into outer space (close enough, anyway).

Movement and Combat Feel - We've been working on implementing all of the basics of party selection, movement, and combat. This includes working on personal space, ally and enemy pathing, friendly "bumping" during movement, ranges of melee attacks, attack timing and delays, target selection, and response time. A lot of work goes into making these elements feel good and feel "IE-ish" (while excluding the IE-ish things we didn't like).

We’ve also been building block-in weapon meshes and putting them in the game to see how they look in terms of scale. This has gone well, but we're still working on proportions. Some thin weapons, like stilettos, rapiers, and estocs, can be very difficult to discern, especially at lower resolutions. Their thicker cousins, daggers, swords, and greatswords, need to be "beefed up" a small amount to help distinguish them. Even though we need to make a few slight adjustments, our overall approach of making weapons with realistic... ish proportions is working well and feels similar to the characters and weapons found in Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale.

Along with implementing the visuals of the weapons, we're experimenting with weapon statistics and mechanics. Weapons are currently classified as slashing, piercing, or crushing, which is a pretty common division of types. We're not currently using damage types vs. armor types in Project Eternity, but the damage types all have properties that suggest a certain type of usage.

Slashing weapons do the most damage when compared to their counterparts from other categories. E.g., if you compare a greatsword to an estoc to a maul, the greatsword does the most damage. When targets have little to no armor, slashing weapons are the ideal choice. Piercing weapons negate a fixed amount of Damage Threshold, which is the primary way in which armor reduces damage. Though they don't do as much damage as slashing or crushing weapons, their ability to ignore even moderately heavy armor means that it is superior to other weapons in those circumstances. While armor can negate a large amount of damage, there's always a small amount that gets through. Crushing weapons do much more through armor, which makes them the best choice when dealing with very heavily armored targets.

So far, this works well on paper, scales well, and seems to hold up in the game, but it is very "mathy" and not necessarily intuitive because you can't always guess a target's Damage Threshold simply by looking at them (as opposed to armor types, which are usually visually apparent). We will continue to experiment with this to see how it feels in the long run. Our goals are to provide tactical challenges to the player and give them to feedback and tools to adapt and overcome when they're in a difficult spot.

UI Design - Tim and I have been talking about our user interfaces recently. We want to make sure that we improve the functionality of the original designs without completely losing the feeling of those interfaces. One thing we want to avoid is making the UI too "minimalist". We don't want it to feel bloated, of course, but we also recognize that the IE games had "solid" interfaces. They looked like they were made of materials -- wood, stone, and metal -- and had substance to them. When you look at the interfaces for the IE games, they help immerse you in each setting. We'd like to do the same for Project Eternity.

Functionally, we're using Icewind Dale II as our starting point. We've been looking at inventory recently. Tim and I have designed a system that uses three types of gear storage: equipment, top of pack (this name may change!), and stash. Equipment is what your characters are currently using and have ready to use. This includes weapon sets that you can swap between during combat. "Top of pack" is a finite amount of gear that you can access outside of combat for a variety of purposes: replenishing consumables, checking out a shiny new sword you picked up a while back, etc. The top of pack cannot be accessed during combat, but is present as a strategic pool of items that you can access while exploring. The stash is where all of the "other stuff" goes: things you aren't using, items you want to sell, and various doo-dads you'll be looking at later.

When you find gear, you have the option of placing it wherever you'd like as long as there's room for it. You can use it immediately, put it in your top of pack, or just chuck it in the stash. Once an object is in the stash, you can access it at camps, your home, and similar locations. We've created this division of inventory space to add strategy to your gear loadout decisions instead of having a weight limit, while also allowing flexibility for backup equipment. Most importantly, it doesn't prevent you from doing what adventurers love to do most: loot everything they find that isn't bolted down.

Core Four Class Design and Advancement - We want our classes to feel familiar but flexible, so we've designed our "core four" (fighter, priest, rogue, wizard) to reflect traditional D&D roles and allow you to build outside of them. In our current design, each of the classes starts with two active use or modal abilities and one passive bonus.

Fighter

Defender (Mode) - In the Defender mode, fighters' melee attack rates decrease while their melee defenses increase. This is a particularly useful mode to enter when a fighter is blocking a route of attack to protect other party members.

Surge - This active ability allows fighters to rapidly regenerate Stamina for a short period of time.

Melee Accuracy - Fighters have inherent skill with melee weapons that is reflected by a small accuracy bonus.

Priest

1st Level Priest Spells - Priests gain access to all 1st level priest spells. Priests can cast a fixed number of 1st level spells before they must rest to recover their uses. They can cast any combination of different spells up to the per-rest limit. As priests gain levels, their 1st level spells will eventually become per-encounter resources.

Recovery - The Recovery ability regenerates a modest amount of Stamina for allies (including the priest, if in range) in a Medium-sized area at Short range.

Sacred Circle - All allies standing within a Small area around the priest gain Accuracy bonus. This bonus does not include the priest unless there are no conscious allies in range, in which case it applies to the priest.

Rogue

Escape - The rogue may hop a short distance away and all hostiles lose him or her as a direct target for 3 seconds. After the 3 seconds are up, enemies can target the rogue normally.

Reversal - Reversal prepares the rogue for the next melee attack against him or her. When it hits, the rogue takes reduced damage and instantly rolls to the opposite side of the target and executes a powerful melee attack. This will even allow rogues to move past enemies that are fully blocking a path.

Sneak Attack - This damage bonus applies whenever the rogue "flanks" an enemy or when the rogue is hidden from an enemy. Flanking means that the rogue is within a short distance of the target and on the "opposite" side of that enemy from an adjacent ally.

Wizard

1st Level Wizard Spells - Wizards can access all 1st level wizard spells immediately. Unlike other wizard spell levels, the wizard does not need to find scrolls or grimoires to use any 1st level spells. Wizards can cast a fixed number of 1st level spells before they must rest to recover their uses. They can cast any combination of different spells up to the per-rest limit. As wizards gain levels, their 1st level spells will eventually become per-encounter resources.

Blast - When wizards use any implement (i.e. a wand, rod, or scepter), they generate a Blast on the target. The Blast does a modest amount of damage to all enemies in a Small area around the target (excluding the target).

Familiar - All wizards can summon and dismiss familiars. Familiars are mobile "totems" for the wizard, providing defensive bonuses to allies near them and inflicting defensive penalties to enemies near them. Players can also access the master's spell list through the familiar, though casting a spell through the familiar still requires the master to physically cast it; it's simply targeted from the familiar. Familiars are weak and fragile. If a familiar is killed, the wizard takes damage and is unable to summon his or her familiar until he or she rests again.

As players advance their characters, they have the ability to choose class-specific abilities and more class-neutral talents (more like perks or feats) to customize their character capabilities. If you want to keep your fighters very low maintenance, there are a large number of passive fighter abilities and combat-oriented talents that you can buy. If you'd like to make a fighter that's much more "active-use" (more like a 4E fighter), you can choose to buy more modal and active abilities. Similarly, while all wizards gain additional spells, you can use talents to boost a wizard's damage with implement weapons and Blasts, making them more useful when you're not having them chain-cast a series of limited-use spells.

The same also applies to skills, which are used for a variety of non-combat purposes. All classes start out with bonuses in the skills that their classes most commonly use, but players can choose to reinforce or play against that top. If you want to make a paladin who delights in picking locks, you can do that and get a lot of utility out of the skill -- though the character will never be quite as good as a rogue who specializes in it.

We hope that these approaches use the strengths of a "role-ready" class system while allowing players a large amount of helpful flexibility in how they develop characters over a (hopefully) long and fruitful adventuring career.

That's all for this week, and this year! We'll be back in January with more details on what we're up to and where we're going in the months to come. Thanks for reading!

When you find gear, you have the option of placing it wherever you'd like as long as there's room for it. You can use it immediately, put it in your top of pack, or just chuck it in the stash. Once an object is in the stash, you can access it at camps, your home, and similar locations. We've created this division of inventory space to add strategy to your gear loadout decisions instead of having a weight limit, while also allowing flexibility for backup equipment. Most importantly, it doesn't prevent you from doing what adventurers love to do most: loot everything they find that isn't bolted down.

To be clear, does this mean once you've put an item in the "stash", that you can no longer access it while out on the road, only from those certain locations? eg, if you're in a dungeon, putting things in the stash is a one-way trip, so to speak, until you go "home?"

If that's the case, I like the idea and it seems to be a solution for the deep-dungeon looting with no easy way back to a town/merchant syndrome...altho, it does seem like a rather magical ability, like having a transportation wormhole in your pack.

Ieo

Posted 18 December 2012 - 07:22 PM

Ieo

White Gazebo of the Obsidian Order

Members

1410 posts

UI Design - Tim and I have been talking about our user interfaces recently. We want to make sure that we improve the functionality of the original designs without completely losing the feeling of those interfaces. One thing we want to avoid is making the UI too "minimalist". We don't want it to feel bloated, of course, but we also recognize that the IE games had "solid" interfaces. They looked like they were made of materials -- wood, stone, and metal -- and had substance to them. When you look at the interfaces for the IE games, they help immerse you in each setting. We'd like to do the same for Project Eternity.

To be honest, I hate the IWD1 UI. But I don't know what the IWD2 UI looks like, so I'll have to look into that later...

FighterDefender (Mode) - In the Defender mode, fighters' melee attack rates decrease while their melee defenses increase. This is a particularly useful mode to enter when a fighter is blocking a route of attack to protect other party members.Surge - This active ability allows fighters to rapidly regenerate Stamina for a short period of time.Melee Accuracy - Fighters have inherent skill with melee weapons that is reflected by a small accuracy bonus.

Hm, in relation to AI, what about the ability to actively protect a party member that's being targeted by an enemy? There's an interesting thread on threat-vs-charge-vs-other mechanic... Although that could be an additional skill purchase or something at higher levels, dunno.

As (the casters) gain levels, their 1st level spells will eventually become per-encounter resources.

The per-encounter would be tier-locked cooldowns? And is the grimoire-switch cooldown still in?

nele

Posted 18 December 2012 - 07:29 PM

Don't forget guys like me who use 16:10 (1680:1050) 22inch screens. There are games out there that deal with none 16:9 by adding black bars...

Also I'm not sure if you mentioned this, but please have UI scale as well, or at least allow us the option to set desired scale for the UI (like borderlands 2 did). I myself have bed eyesight and as such have problems with tiny UI (font/buttons) when viewing in my native resolution.

AngryPat

Posted 18 December 2012 - 07:35 PM

AngryPat

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Initiates

3 posts

I just want to add, I hope you guys make the UI nice and readable, or add the ability to enlarge text size if possible, for people like myself who want to play on resolutions such as 1920x1080 but are using television setups from our chairs. It's always depressing to me when a game always makes its UI incredibly tiny, and would make a game like this unplayable. Maybe some kind of TV mode, if the text is too small to read from a setup like this?

Lephys

Posted 18 December 2012 - 07:39 PM

Lephys

Punsmith of the Obsidian Order

Members

7245 posts

Location:The Punforge

Firstly, *_____* ...

ABSORB ALL THE INFOS!

I know this baby's still in its infancy, but I'm LOVING how much thought is going into the strategic nature of all the systems. Keep it up! And have a lovely several holiday weeks in your magical elfhomes! ^_^

To be clear, does this mean once you've put an item in the "stash", that you can no longer access it while out on the road, only from those certain locations? eg, if you're in a dungeon, putting things in the stash is a one-way trip, so to speak, until you go "home?"

If that's the case, I like the idea and it seems to be a solution for the deep-dungeon looting with no easy way back to a town/merchant syndrome...altho, it does seem like a rather magical ability, like having a transportation wormhole in your pack.

Based upon his mention of "camp," I'd say that there will be limited times when you can access your stash whilst still away from a town or other such form of civilization. Whether rest spots and camp spots will be one in the same... who knows. But I'm sure it'll be to inventory access as resting will be to combat readiness replenishment (Health, highest-level-available spells, familiar, etc.).

This is speculation based on incomplete hard details, of course. 8P

Your classes make me feel like you have a melee tank, a ranged healer, a squishy melee dps who can escape the fight at will, and a ranged caster dps.

None of these interest me particularly. Please include more options, like straight up melee dps, ranged physical dps, etc

Easy does it. They didn't say they were telling us ALL of the available variants of the classes. This is just the fundamental ability set prototype for the 4 basic classes.

It sounds like they're planning on a pretty wide range of variance in the specific progression you can choose for each class (Like how Josh hinted at how Wizards' straight-up combat effectiveness can be bolstered heavily as an alternative to having them rely on limited-cast active abilities.)

Ieo

Posted 18 December 2012 - 07:40 PM

Your classes make me feel like you have a melee tank, a ranged healer, a squishy melee dps who can escape the fight at will, and a ranged caster dps.

None of these interest me particularly. Please include more options, like straight up melee dps, ranged physical dps, etc

While combat really isn't the focus of your game and won't be the focus of my playthrough, at the least I'd like to be 'okay' :|

I'm guessing you didn't read the other Kickstarter updates. These are only the four core classes. There are... a whole bunch of other classes too. Not to mention specialization options for each. So go forth and read! Although Obsidian hasn't detailed several of the other classes just yet.

(Wait, combat isn't the focus of PE? I think you really completely missed the Kickstarter, then. The IWD series was all combat. PE is supposed to be a complete trifecta with plenty of good combat along with the narrative and questing.)

Lephys

Posted 18 December 2012 - 07:48 PM

Lephys

Punsmith of the Obsidian Order

Members

7245 posts

Location:The Punforge

^ Yeah, the inventory thing is GENIUS! You may not be able to access some things until you get back to town/a camp spot, but at least your ability to TRAVEL to said accessy place at more than a snail crawl is not impeded,

JWestfall

Posted 18 December 2012 - 07:51 PM

JWestfall

Beer Taster of the Obsidian Order

Members

160 posts

Great stuff, lots of info. Thanks!

So far, this works well on paper, scales well, and seems to hold up in the game, but it is very "mathy" and not necessarily intuitive because you can't always guess a target's Damage Threshold simply by looking at them (as opposed to armor types, which are usually visually apparent).

Perhaps give this info as hints in the creature description, or reveal this from in-game sources (lorebooks or NPCs), or even allow statistics like this to be visible when a certain number of that enemy type has been killed (I believe I've seen this last mechanic before, probably in some roguelike games). This could all be backed up with good ol' experimentation on the player's part, of course.

Also I'm not sure if you mentioned this, but please have UI scale as well, or at least allow us the option to set desired scale for the UI (like borderlands 2 did). I myself have bed eyesight and as such have problems with tiny UI (font/buttons) when viewing in my native resolution.

I second this - scalable UI + fonts. I hate having to adjust to non-native resolution just to read small text.

nalgas

Posted 18 December 2012 - 07:52 PM

nalgas

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Don't forget guys like me who use 16:10 (1680:1050) 22inch screens. There are games out there that deal with none 16:9 by adding black bars...

That was the first thing I thought of too, running at 1920x1200 on my desktop and 1280x800 on my laptop. They do show two 16:10 resolutions in that image, but only ones larger than their target, not any of the common smaller ones.

The rest sounds good though, and the inventory setup is pretty much everything I could've ever hoped for.

Jademalo

Posted 18 December 2012 - 08:00 PM

Jademalo

(1) Prestidigitator

Members

12 posts

Xbox Gamertag:Jademalo

EDIT 2: After a bit of reading, thinking, and messing around with old IE games, this is my new assumption, please tell me if I'm right;

The game will be rendered for two different base resolutions. 2560x1440 and 1280x720. If you are running either of these resolutions, the game area will be exactly the same size, but the backgrounds will have double the definition.

If you are running >2560x1440 you will be using the renders designed for 2560x1440 but will have a larger game area, similar to using the resolution hack on old IE games to run at 1920x1080 or higher

Now, running at 1920x1080 is complicated, due to conflicting statements;

"We will likely downsample these to run at 1920x1080."

" We believe that this base resolution will scale well up to 1920x1080" after talking about 1280x720.

This can be interpreted one of two ways;

For people running 1920x1080, you will have the same game area size as 1280x720 and 2560x1440, and will use backgrounds that are scaled down from the renders designed for 2560x1440

For people running 1920x1080, you will have a larger game area size than 1280x720 and 2560x1440, and will use backgrounds that are from the renders designed for 1280x720

This whole thing is horribly ambiguous due to that conflict - Is it being scaled, or is there going to be more game area? An answer of which is true and which is false to the above statements would be hugely appreciated.

(Old Post)

Can I please have a bit of clarification with regards to the scaling?

This is how I have understood it, please correct me if I'm wrong;

The game will be rendered at two resolutions - 2560x1440 and 1280x720

According to the image, you will get the same scale and screenspace on those two resolutions

1920x1080 will use the 2560x1440 render, but will show a smaller amount of screenspace.

Now, this is what confused me:

Currently, we're looking at a base resolution of 1280x720. A large number of laptops run at this resolution or its slightly bigger brother, 1366x768. It's not quite twice the resolution of the original games (640x480) due to the 16:9 aspect ratio, but pretty close. We believe that this base resolution will scale well up to 1920x1080,

This implies that 1920x1080 is using a scaled up 1280x720 render

For our higher resolution, we are likely going to render out to a ~2560x1440 screen size, as we did with our environment during the Kickstarter campaign.We will likely downsample these to run at 1920x1080. With resolutions above "mere" Retina displays, we will zoom out, which should allow the backgrounds to scale into outer space (close enough, anyway).

However... This implies the exact opposite.

Because of this, I'm thoroughly confused.Will you be showing the same amount of ingame area (screenspace) on all resolution settings, but using different methods of image scaling and a different render depending on your resolution?Will you only show more screenspace by using a wider aspect ratio? (i.e. 16:9 users see more than 4:3 users)

Also, with regards to the incredibly high resolutions, will you literally be adding black space to the edges of the screen like inside buildings in the ild IE games?

This whole post has left me with more questions than answers, it's not been clear at all =[

(EDIT: And yes, I understand that is not the literal size of the render, and just the targeted screen playing size.)

txfeinbergs

Posted 18 December 2012 - 08:03 PM

txfeinbergs

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11 posts

Resolution and Scaling

Also I'm not sure if you mentioned this, but please have UI scale as well, or at least allow us the option to set desired scale for the UI (like borderlands 2 did). I myself have bed eyesight and as such have problems with tiny UI (font/buttons) when viewing in my native resolution.

. I wanted to second the UI scaling request. I want to run the game at 2560 x 1600 (and am very pleased you are supporting this), but don't want to have to squint to read the small text or user interface buttons.

Jon of the Wired

Posted 18 December 2012 - 08:03 PM

Jon of the Wired

Grognard of the Obsidian Order

Members

87 posts

To be clear, does this mean once you've put an item in the "stash", that you can no longer access it while out on the road, only from those certain locations? eg, if you're in a dungeon, putting things in the stash is a one-way trip, so to speak, until you go "home?"

If that's the case, I like the idea and it seems to be a solution for the deep-dungeon looting with no easy way back to a town/merchant syndrome...altho, it does seem like a rather magical ability, like having a transportation wormhole in your pack.

The way I'm interpreting this is that the stash is not a bank or a chest in some fixed location, but rather represents gear that is stuffed deeply and inaccessibly in the bowels of someone's pack. So, equipment is the stuff you have immediately at hand, "top of pack" is stuff that you've placed in an accessible location, a belt pouch, small bag, or literally the top of a pack. The stash, then, is all the things you have packed together so tightly that in order to find and retrieve any particular item you would just have to unpack and repack everyone's bags. In that case, it would make sense that you would only have the necessary time and security to do it in the same sort of place you would feel comfortable resting.

NZSnowman

Posted 18 December 2012 - 08:07 PM

Don't forget guys like me who use 16:10 (1680:1050) 22inch screens. There are games out there that deal with none 16:9 by adding black bars...

That was the first thing I thought of too, running at 1920x1200 on my desktop and 1280x800 on my laptop. They do show two 16:10 resolutions in that image, but only ones larger than their target, not any of the common smaller ones.

The rest sounds good though, and the inventory setup is pretty much everything I could've ever hoped for.